User blog:BirdOfBlueFeathers22/Review of "Marble Mover"
It's been many months since I reviewed a Peep episode. I'm not entirely happy with my selection of reviews from last spring, so I've decided to repost all but a few of them, and maybe give some updated thoughts on them. So, without further ado, here is my review of "Marble Mover". Synopsis of Episode The episode begins with a title card on a light blue background. Peep and Quack appear to be standing at the base of a hill; as Peep watches, Quack is standing with his back to a blue marble and stretching. He then hits the marble up the hill with his butt, only for it to come rolling back down to behind him. We open to a shot of Peep walking, entering the scene on emerging from the opposite side of a bush. He is humming to himself and looking around, and the marble, which is light blue with dark blue stripes, soon comes into view. Joan says that one day, while out for a walk, Peep found something sort of...strange. As she says this, Peep notices the marble, stops, and runs over to it. We focus on a closeup of it as Peep bends down to look at it. "It's like a small balloon with clouds inside," he comments. We go back to the wide shot, and Peep pecks at the marble with his beak. "A small, hard balloon," he says, adding, "Strange!" while looking at it rather suspiciously. He hops to the opposite side, and as he starts kicking it offscreen, Joan explains how he decided to take the small hard balloon with clouds inside (which was actually a marble!) back home for further study. Peep reaches the base of a hill and continues kicking the marble up the hill. As both vanish out of the frame, Joan comments that at least that was his plan. And we see the marble roll back down the hill, followed by Peep, who runs down after it. He kicks it again, with the same result. Walking down the hill, he looks at the marble and asks, "Why won't it go up?" He stares at it some more, bends down and starts moving it with his head. As he gets farther up the hill it gets harder, to which he actually comments, "This...is...not..easy." When he stops for a moment, the marble of course rolls back down the hill. "Sometimes marbles go where you want them to go," Joan says as Peep watches the marble roll back down the hill and goes after it. "And sometimes they're a pain in the neck," she says as Peep reaches the bottom of the hill and Quack arrives. "Why so blue, Peep?" he asks, seeing Peep's sad expression. "Not that blue isn't a great thing to be," he adds smugly. Peep explains that he's trying to get this round thing up the hill and it won't go. Quack bends down to inspect the marble. "Did...you...ask a duck?" he says, smiling smugly. "No," Peep says, to Quack's surprise. "So?" Quack asks after a beat. "Ask! Ask a duck!" "Oh!" Peep says. "Um...Quack, could you get this up the hill for me?" "Well let's see, uh..." Quack says, bending down to inspect the marble again. "Round thing, big hill, strong duck, carry the seven..." he mutters as he does, and then stands up and confidently says, "No problem, Peep! Leave it to me, that's covered!" And he then proceeds to move the marble with his butt. After a moment, he says, "You see Peep, ducks are an invaluable resource you should never be afraid to ask---" and suddenly the marble rolls back down the hill and hits him, knocking him upside down (you could actually see Peep noticing it just before it came into view!). "See?" Peep says. "It always rolls back down." Quack falls over and stares at the marble. Getting up, he says, "Obviously I just need to kick it..." and, after bending down and staring at it, he smacks it up the hill with his right foot, saying, "...harder!" as he does. And then he yells, "Ow! Owie! Ow, ow, ouch!", hopping around in pain. We then see the marble reach near the top of the hill...and roll back down again. We cut back to Quack sucking his hurt foot, when Peep and then he notice the marble rolling back down the hill. Quack screams and hops away, tripping over a rock as he does so, landing beak-first on the ground. The marble rolls into view and hits him, bouncing onto and then rolling off of him. Quack opens his eyes in surprise, saying, "Sorry, Peep. I give up. No can do." With some difficulty, he pries his beak out of the ground (bending in the process; he shakes it straight) as Peep comes over. Quack grumpily goes off as Peep thanks him anyways. As Peep stares at the marble, he says, "I know! I'll ask Chirp. She can always figure stuff out." At this Quack does a double take, and goes back over to Peep, saying, "You know, Peep, I've been thinking...ducks really are the best at solving problems! That's why we say, 'Ask a duck', instead of, 'Ask a red bird'." Hopping over to the other side of the marble, he says, "I will get this up that hill for you. Or my name's not..." And here he pauses, and we get a big wide shot of them by the hill as he thinks...and quacks. "Quack got right to work," Joan says as he draws in a patch of dirt with his right foot. "He pushed his duck brain to the limit..." And we see him drawing the hill, the marble, and himself. He and Peep stare at the drawing. "...and got nowhere," Joan finishes. "So, he decided to seek some advice." And he walks to the right and out of the frame as Peep watches. We cut to Quack near Beaver Boy's dam, talking with Beaver Boy and Squirrel. Then we fade to him underwater, with Fish Jr. The we fade to him at the crab apple tree, standing on his left foot on top of a sleeping Newton. Next, we fade to his hat floating near the frog at the pond. He briefly raises his eyes above the water, and goes back under. "Once all the key elements of his plan were in place, Quack was ready to start," says Joan. Now we fade to a closeup of Quack's feet near the marble as he stretches his toes. As we pull out and he stretches his legs, too, Quack says that his plan is perfect, and that in a matter of minutes, this (and here he gives a sort of evil laugh) will be on top of that, and we get another wide shot of him by the hill. "Or my name's not...Quack," he says, giving us an awesomely smug look. "The first, and most important part of Quack's plan," says Joan, "Was to avoid the hill completely." As she says this, he hops around the marble on his right foot, eventually kicking it with his left. It rolls down the slope, hits a rock, and flies into the air. We cut to Beaver Boy waiting on his dam to catch it, which he does, saying out loud, "I got it, I got it! Did you see that? I got it!" He then walks off the dam carrying it, and running with it, says to himself, "Don't drop it, don't drop it, don't drop it." We cut to Quack by the edge of the water. "Seriously," he says, "Don't drop it!" This seems to startle Beaver Boy as he arrives, and he loses his grip on the marble, fails to catch it, and it falls into the water. "Oops," he says, and goes down into the water to get it. Quack watches him in anticipation and begins to pace around nervously, but before long Beaver Boy's hand emerges holding the marble. "Got it!" he says, as his head surfaces. He comes to shore and gives it to the delighted Quack. Unfortunately it's dripping, and Quack hisses, "The plan! Don't forget the plan!" to Beaver Boy. "Oh, right!" says Beaver Boy, and runs off to the right. The camera moves with him as he reaches Squirrel, who is standing near a leaf. Beaver Boy gives it to him; Squirrel looks annoyed as he goes off, and puts the marble on the leaf. Then, hands on his hips, he watches Quack come onscreen and reluctantly kick an accorn over to him. Squirrel smiles and takes it. He crams it in his mouth, salutes Quack, and begins carrying the marble on the leaf. As Squrrel moves along the edge of the water, Joan comments, "Quack was quite proud. So far his plan was working to perfection." Suddenly Squirrel stops and holds his stomach, looking sick. After teetering around for a bit, he collapses. Quack, on cue, comes onscreen with another accorn, which he drops near Squirrel. "That's the last one, okay?" he tells him. Squirrel happily crams it in his mouth, salutes Quack, and rolls the marble off the leaf and into the water. Underwater, we see Fish Jr. watching it sink. She swims to where it is on the floor of the pond, and bites on it, trying to move it. She manages to lift it, but we pan out and see Quack underwater, who says, "Hurry up! We're four second behind schedule!" Fish Jr., who has set the marble back on the ground, says, "I'm trying," in a muffled voice. Quack helps her by taking it in his beak, too, and swimming to the surface with her. Once at the surface, he looks suspicious and swims over to the frog, who is sitting on a lillypad, which Quack places the marble on. "The frog did his part particularly well," says Joan. The frog opens one eye, and then looks startled (the camera pans out for effect). He jumps off the lillypad, sending the marble flying into the air once more. Now we get a wide shot of Newton on his hill by his crabapple tree. "Finally, it was all up to Newton," Joan says, as the marble bounces onto all three rocks on the hillside in succession, and then lands on top of Newton's shell. It then rolls off. We then see Quack walking to the top of the hill from earlier. Looking behind him, he says, "Well, Peep, thanks to the pure mental superiority of the duck..." he stops to pant, "...your round thing will be arriving here..." he stops again to pant, as we see Peep is watching him from below, "...any second!" And he gives a weak laugh. He then stares out over to Newton's hill and watches the marble roll down it. Looking back, he says, "No need for thanks, Peep! It'll be enough for you to tell everyone you ever met---" and here the marble rolls up past him and down the hill, "---that I did this for you!" And here he looks back, and seeing the result, jumps, yelling, "No! Nooooooo!" He hurries down the hill after the rolling marble, yelling, "Nononono, nonono, no!" We cut to Peep by Quack's drawing plan; the marble rolls into view and he stops it with his right foot. Quack comes running into the frame and screeches to a halt. "This is not possible!" he declares, bending down by the marble. "I had it all worked out! My plan was foolproof! Quack." "Well, thanks anyway, Quack," says Peep. "It was a good try." "No, where did I go wrong?" says Quack, looking at his drawing apprehensively. Squinting his right eye, he mutters, "Hill, duck, round thing...I mean it should've worked perfectly..." As he continues to look at it unhappily, Chirp arrives and asks what's the matter with Quack, noticing he looks upset. As Quack's expression changes from sadness to anger, Peep explains to Chirp that he was trying to get Peep's round thing up the hill. "It's impossible, Peep," Quack declares. "That's the only explanation. It's...impossible! ''Can't be done." "You can't get a marble up a hill?" Chirp asks brightly. "Of course you can." She hops toward it, as Quack looks at her doubtfully and says, "Oh sure." He walks off into the bottom right of the frame, saying, "Good luck, my friend." And with a smirk, adds, "Some birds never learn." Chirp kicks the marble with her left foot a slight distance, hops over to it, and, as it begins to roll down, stops it with her right foot and kicks it diagonally up the hill. Hopping over to where it is now and reaching it before it rolls much, she kicks it with her left foot diagonally up the hill in the other way. Then she hops over to where it is now. Peep watches in interest and goes to join her. As he does, we see Chirp kicking the ball up the hill to the right with her right foot; then she hops over to where the ball is about to roll down, and kicks it with her left foot up the hill to the left. Then she hops over to where it's about to roll down now, and kicks with her right foot up the hill to the right. Then she hops over to where it's about to roll down ''now, and kick it up and to the left with her left foot. (Through all this, Peep is following her in the reverse diagonal direction, screeching to a halt every time she's about to kick the marble.) Then, she hops over to where it's about to roll down now...and we fade to the top of the hill, where we see it rolling up, followed by Chirp. As they both reach near the top, she gives it a final small push with her left foot, hopping over to the other side of it as Peep arrives. "Yaaaaayyyyy!" he cheers. "You did it, Chirp! You got it up the hill!" "I just zigzagged," Chirp explains. "That's how I walk up a hill sometimes. It's not as hard as going straight up." Then she says, "So...why did you want it here anyway?" Peep takes a moment to think. "I forget!" he says, looking unsure. "Well, it's a pretty marble," says Chirp, examining it. "Really, really pretty." "Oh yeah!" says Peep. "I wanted to take it home so I could figure out...what it was..." He looks uncertain at Chirp at that last part, maybe worried that she might be mad at him for not just asking her. "What's a marble?" he then asks. Chirp bends down by the marble and explains that it's...well...a small round hard thing, and that it sometimes has colors inside. Peep bends down by it, too, going, "Ohhh." We fade to night. The marble rolls into the frame from the left, followed by Peep. Joan explains that there are lots of uses for small round hard things with colors inside. You can kick them, you can admire them, or you can use them to cheer up ducks. (With each thing Joan lists, Peep kicks it with his left foot, then right, and then left and right). We can see Peep is walking by the water, and as Joan finishes, we pull out to see Quack in the water, winking at Peep. "No a little to the left," he says, as Peep moves it to the left with his left foot. "Uh-huh, uh yeah...uh no no no, too far," he adds. "Yeah, a little to the right," he says, and Peep kicks it to the right with his right foot. "Okay okay there...there!" he says as Peep stops it with his right foot. "Niiiiiice," he finally sighs. We then get a wide shot of the pond as Quack says, "Y'know, I always wanted a blue rock. Don't ask me why." And we fade out. Thoughts on the Episode This is a pretty funny episode. The premise is just fantastic: Quack is given a fairly simple problem to solve, and, using his duck brain, comes up with the craziest scheme possible. I love Rube Goldberg situations, so the fact that this episode is built around one makes for a fun watch. By the way, ZOOM made not one, but two Rube Goldberg inventions. I wonder if this was inspired by that? Quack's insanely complicated and fun method of getting the marble to the top of the hill just goes to show how he is kind of smart...in his unique duck way. And the fact that he got all those other animals to help shows how he has a lot of connections with the residents of the park. The end result---how the marble ended up rolling back down the hill just because he was talking too much and forgot to watch it---was hilarious, and Quack then believing that it must be impossible was just the icing on the cake. Peep was well-written, as usual, going along with Quack's idea and being understanding when it didn't work. And I can't possibly leave out Chirp. As small of a part as she had, she was really well-written, too. The fact that she noticed Quack was upset and asked what was wrong with him shows that even though she can't stand him, she can still be concerned for him, as he's her friend. And then, seeing her get the marble up the hill...was just awesome. She is just awesome. There's not too much more to say. The ending was pretty heartwarming, and there were a few other moments I espicially liked, such as Quack forgetting his own name, or when he helped Fish Jr. with the marble. This is an episode that could easily fit into any season, but worked great here. All in all, there's really nothing to complain about. Well, Beaver Boy was in it, but he didn't have too big of a part so it worked fine. Anyways, this was a fun one to review, since the lack of dialogue during parts of Quack's scheme meant I could summarize those parts faster than usual. It's a very fun, very funny episode that's definitely worth watching. Category:Blog posts